


put   me   back   in

by Pink_Siamese



Category: The Killing
Genre: Blood and Gore, Character Study, Cunnilingus, Dark, Dissociation, Dream Sex, Experimental Style, F/M, Graphic Description of Corpses, Grief/Mourning, Masturbation, Nightmares, One Shot, POV Female Character, POV Third Person Limited, Sort-of-Necrophilia, Spoilers - Pied Piper Story Arc, abjection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 19:03:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2822786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pink_Siamese/pseuds/Pink_Siamese
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Linden embarks on a hallucinatory descent into grief. </p>
<p>Holder meets her at the bottom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	put   me   back   in

 

 

 

1\. _cold and deep_

Smooth silence punctuated by waves, echoes of waves, overridden by the wind. It’s pulled down from dizzying blue heights by the mountains, grasped by trees, raked down. It’s cradled by them, the mountains, urged into a long slow slide over the water.

Silence made up of the elements, strung with the calls of birds, rustlings, there are insects perched in the lush greenery. They pulse through the wet land.

In her mind, she stands beside the lake. When she thinks about it. She stands there, paralyzed; she looks at the lake, she’s helpless not to, at the expanse of it, the sheer weight.

_Cold and deep_. Beautiful, cold and deep, it is the way he thinks of himself: _Sometimes I think people like us are meant to be alone._

“He thought.” Sometimes in her real life, she murmurs out loud the words she’s thinking, when she imagines herself at the lake’s edge. “He thought. But he’s not thinking now.”

Light is caught in its surface and tossed back into her face, into her eyes. Under the surface lies the car, it is the dark heart of the lakeshore, a sleek gray jewel box packed with rot. Despite the hostility of the water, there is never enough sun to blind her. It falls out of the sky, the water throws it, but it is not quite bright enough to stab her sight, to draw tears.

She will squat. Run fingers over the cold, damp pebbles, the rocks, the grit. She’ll seek the imprints left by the tires.

Sometimes, they are there.

Sometimes, they are not.

 

 

 

2\. _coming/becoming_

 

 

The tears come at night, under the covers, under her roof. Locked inside a bedroom, she allows the rage to leak from her eyes.

Here, with walls wrapped around her, she thinks about the white sky beyond the windows, her tree exposed by the land; beyond that lie woods, a road, the bedrock of this island breaking apart at the water’s edge. It tumbles into the arms of the Pacific, its deep numbing cold awakened by the sun into a vicious bitter blue. The sea, always dragging at the land. Hauling it off, the spoils of a billion-year war.

At night, she opens the windows. Lets in the air, cold and damp. The chill slinks into the room, bites into her, leaves its teeth embedded in her skin.

On the wind rides the sound of the waves, distant, an echo of waves, of rain, of condensation dripping; it is laden with the restlessness of moisture, the constant coming and becoming of a shoreline.

Her tears burn her cheeks. Even at home, with the walls between her and the outside, she cannot escape the murmur, the echo, the drip of his dissembling flesh.

Cold and deep.

She’s been on the job a long time. The flesh of a body will yield immediately to the harsh and frantic embrace of water. It will slough itself of itself, bacteria converting the skin into gases. The fishes come. Water floods the flesh, loosens it from all that once made it whole, carries it off. It absconds with the trace of touch, of heat, the decision to shiver.

Here, near the shoreline, bedrock is no match for the tireless attentions of water. Here, a body is ephemeral as a kiss.

 

 

3\. _the body_

 

 

Her body.

_My body._

Sarah’s body; held together by guts and sinews, routine and reaction, it strains all the years of her life and loses strength in the process: here, a scar, thick and pearly, there a wrinkle, a riverbed left by time, a crease worn delicate into the corner of her mouth. Hairs are stripped of their golden glint, russet worn away to expose the silver beneath. At the window she sees a ghost of her face afloat on the glass. Day by day, minute by minute, she trades small integrities for the privilege of breath.

Her body, it is not ephemeral. Not today. It will hold on for awhile yet.

 

 

 4. _a deconstruction_

 

 

Down in that lake, far below the shifting light of the surface, it’s murky. On her side, on her bed, she squeezes her burned-out eyes shut, holds the pillow tight with her knees.

She pretends.

She summons the weight of the water, spreads it over her. Breathes. She swims down into the murk. She cannot see, she must feel her way, palm through clouds of silken silt, caress slimy rocks with her fingertips. She slides a hand up the car’s smooth flank.

She becomes a fish.

_I miss you_ , she says, darting in to his white cheek. She swims into his mouth, swims out again. The lips of the fish, its tiny silver body undulating, nibble the corner of his mouth. It tastes like all the hot hurried kisses she pressed there. _You monster_. She brushes up against the cheek; it and the water, now the same temperature. _I hate you._

Nausea knots up her guts, steamy and sweating.

She cries, weeps into the sheets. The tears erode her ties to consciousness. Her exhaustion drags her down. She floats in a darkness, dreams forming. They swim to her—

…white light, white sheets, this window, sun cut into a square. His face, it is a terrain loved deep into her memory but now here is water rising it pours into his mouth rising his nose floods rising his eyes buried, so dark, so shrouded, like holes carved into the bottom of the sea

…flat crack, slight flash, charred scent, the hole, hot iron. She smells his blood before it smears all over the air, his hand, drawn upon thin cotton in the unctuousness of blood

…ruins, a lost city, the fall of an empire. Skin like parchment, poems and curses scrawled there, a deconstruction, the wild snarling face of a desperate animal splattered across a pale blue shirt

—and she pushes them away. They brush her hands, dissolve around her into pictures, smears of thought, filmstrips whickering up into life.

 

 

5\. _bad_

 

 

When it’s bad, the tire tracks are there.

When it’s bad, she stands. Steps into one of them. Arms held out, shivering in the cold, she places one foot in front of the other. Biting her lip, tasting metal, she walks the line. She balances her way down to the lake’s edge like a drunk.

It’s night. Stars overhead.

It’s in her mind, only in her mind, all of it, all of this: disjointed and scattered, but the line between thought and reality is thinner than it used to be.

 

 

 6. _where the heart would be_

 

 

One night Sarah falls out of dark soft sleep into a room. She lands, a quiet thud. Breathes into the silence. She knows it’s a room by the faint echo bouncing off its four walls.

She opens her eyes. It is her room, but it is also like a waiting room, all white, empty. Baptized in light.

She looks down. The body is there. She finds herself astride it, thighs spread, gripping the flanks. His flanks. The flanks of James Skinner, her lover, her victim. The holes are there, the ones she put in him. In the white light, lit up by the strength of the sun, the holes are clean, ragged. No blood. He’s still warm. Her cunt is numb; she cannot feel whether his cock’s inside her.

She leans over. Digs her fingers into his destroyed chest. She worms her hands into the hole, rips it, widens it. She curls against ledges of bone. She grits her teeth. It’s hard work, the body is stiff. The muscles in her arms tremble. Her body shakes. Sweat tingles up from her skin into a thin slick blanket. She closes her eyes. The blood, old and dark, is thick and slippery. It oozes up through her fingers. Sweat drips off her nose.

Everywhere, penetrating, condensed upon her skin, a smell of rain.

The bone cracks. The sudden yielding of it sparks a harsh blooming heat in her clit. She grunts, pulls harder. The splintering of him brings a hot hard rush of rage. She rocks his chest apart, pushes her fingers between his ribs. The effort splits the skin along her spine. It sizzles, tugs when she pulls, burns. Her back wails; the edges of her skin cry out their grief. In her hands, his ribcage comes apart. It sprawls in chunks, open, garish upon the white bed.

She reaches inside. Breathes, her head bowed. She is wet with sweat.

Her fingers encounter a smooth surface. It’s living, there’s minute trembling movement, heat.

Where the heart would be, a new face.

It’s a man, tender-skinned but with strong bones, translucent veins, closed eyes, pink mouth; the features are unformed, she sees the shapes of bones that yearn to belong to him but are held back. She scoops away small handfuls of gore. Fast asleep, the bones are motionless; they dream of becoming, of some other face. She wipes clotted blood off the cheeks. Bit by bit, sensation fills her cunt. It tingles around the shape of his cock, heats up; with the pace of ice she starts to throb, a beat a minute, abandoning death for hibernation. The sweetness unfolds in her clit, sharp and flaring. It strikes sparks. Her spine crawls. The skin itches.

She tucks her hands inside the ruins. Holds the new skin, feels its pulse. She moves her hips to the slow rhythm of bitter blue veins.

Her orgasm hooks through her pelvic bones, jerks her back and forth. Heat flutters. Her fingers twitch.

Her mouth falls open and a fog rolls out of her lungs, spreads through the room. It smears itself across the windowpanes. It carries into the room a dark scent of ocean waves, a murmur of water, the ache a slow death.

 

 

 6. _very bad_

 

 

When it’s very bad, Sarah thinks about how long she can hold her breath.

When it’s very bad, the urge to find a way beneath the water, to slip into the submerged car, itches in her fingertips.

She wants to claw the bullets out of his body and keep them, too.

 

 

 7. _you_

 

 

Look at me Sarah

Look at me

It’s got to be

you got to be you has to be

YOU SARAH

Loved me.

You loved me.

 

 

 8. _water_

 

 

Sarah’s body.

It is hollow. Bled out. It’s hungry. It begs for food, growls for it, wrings tears, writes dizzy spells into her head. Her heart pummels her from the inside.

Sarah’s body is tired past tired, it has abandoned exhaustion. It’s half-dead.

In the car, in her driveway, she pulls down her pants. One rain-lashed night. She licks her fingers, slides them beneath her panties. Water sheeting down the windshield. Closes her eyes. Hiss, hiss of the water, constant. She separates her lips, rubs at her dry clit, waits.

 

 

9\. _the worst_

 

 

“Holder?”

She’s out of her own skin, outside, cast forth. Adrift, hidden in this rain, this unceasing rain, shrouded by this blanket of water. So much wet.

She’s outside of herself. She panics, floats; she cannot catch hold of herself, not with nails or teeth, not with thoughts and wishes. She feels her way up to the walls, feels them, they feel like nothing, like air. She goes in circles. The bed is stripped naked white sheets gone pillows cut down the middle stuffing yanked out, disemboweled, on the floor. She longs to climb back in through her mouth, push past her teeth, feel her velvet throat quiver around her soul. She would strain herself through the ribs, slide down the long bones, wriggle back into her tight suit of entrails. She would pull away from the skin, curl up cat-like inside the heels of her feet.

“You all right? I can hear you breathin. Linden, come on now. Talk to me. Say you’re all right.”

She stands. She cannot feel her feet. She stands by the window, looks at it, into the black beyond the glass. She does not see herself. No outline, no shapes. No holes for eyes, no light for skin. No trembling shadow of a mouth.

It is the worst thing, the worst.

“Fuck this. I’m on my way.”

She blinks. She’s on the bed, in the center, thighs hugged to chest. Rocking. She feels that, feels it a little, the sensation comes down a long corridor to reach her, it is a whisper fading out into emptiness. She blinks. Cold on her skin, circling. It perches on her fingertips, her toes. Trembles a little. She blinks.

Light. Burning harsh, white then yellow, it steals the reds from the room. Her lips are purple. She leans forward, kisses them on the glass.

She blinks.

Holder comes to the door.

Outside, thunder.

Inside, darkness.

 

 

10\. _put me back in_

 

 

“Just think about this, all right?”

His hands— _Stephen’s hands; he is Stephen, now_ —are open on the insides of her thighs. Pressing. The cold. His breath. Heat.

“Just this, Linden. Just this.”

Hot, slithering tongue. It jumps into her breath. Sparks, glittering, open one at a time behind her lids. They scatter gooseflesh up her body.

He breathes life into her cunt. “Mmmm, Sarah,” he murmurs; his voice is like smoke, the heat in his mouth is like silk. “You’re so sweet, mmmm, you melt, you’re just like sugar baby girl. So delicious.”

He slips three fingers into her. Slow, slow, pumps. His tongue hot upon her clit.

_Yes yes oh_ , she makes a face, her voice is trapped, her fingers dig, her toes curl, her body rocks, she twists, it rains, it thunders. He holds her down, she strains like a seed left in the hot wet earth _yes please_

_yes_

_just_

_put me back in_


End file.
